


We Will Call This Place Our Home

by lionheartedghost



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 3x18, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Tag, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24153664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedghost/pseuds/lionheartedghost
Summary: He has a family. A wife and step-children and the 118 and their families. He’s gone from nothing to so many people he would die for in a heartbeat, all of them here now, happy and smiling and safe. He loves them all, proudly, fiercely.And that terrifies him. Because he knows how easily that can slip away.Bobby realises how much he has to lose. Athena promises him his family isn't going anywhere. Set towards the end of 3x18.
Relationships: Athena Grant/Bobby Nash
Comments: 22
Kudos: 98





	We Will Call This Place Our Home

**Author's Note:**

> Tag to 9-1-1 episode 3x18, inspired by Bobby and Buck's conversation inside the train.
> 
> Title taken from 'North' by Sleeping at Last.
> 
> Also posted on Tumblr.

Bobby is watching the sun begin to set over the back garden, the party still carrying on behind him, when he realises the conversation from the train crash is still echoing in his head. It’s distant, a sort of silhouette of a thought that’s been there for days, whispering so quietly he doesn’t even notice it at first, but it’s there. He glances over his shoulder to consider the full-to-bursting living room, smiles fondly at the laughter and the brightness and the chaos of it all. The sight of it makes the conversation in his head a little louder.  
  
Maybe ‘conversation’ isn’t the word he’s looking for. It’s not Buck’s part of it that won’t leave him alone. That’s water under the bridge, heated words fired in desperation, because only Buck could have his heart broken and then fight tooth and nail to risk his life for the stranger who’d come after him.  
  
It’s his own words he can still hear. He hadn’t even thought about them at the time, had barely registered them as he’d said them, but now they won’t leave him alone.  
  
_I am tired of being on the wrong side of those hospital doors_.  
  
He’s not really sure where it came from. Okay, maybe he does know where it came from, in that Buck was pretty happy to risk being crushed under a train carriage barely a year after nearly losing a leg from a _different_ crush accident, but it’s more than that. Bobby had started thinking then, holding his breath and sending up a prayer every time he felt the slightest shift in the carriage. He’d realised what it was. And now he couldn’t find a way to silence it.  
  
Because there was this strange thing about how easily the words had come, a realisation that he must’ve already known, that was _obvious_ to anyone else, but it still startled him a little.  
  
He’d come to LA with nothing four years ago now. No family. No friends. No hopes for anything, if he’s honest. And now?  
  
Bobby turns around fully to survey the room.  
  
May and Harry are taking pictures, as many novelty props draped over themselves as they can manage. Harry grins up at his sister; she tips the hat he’s wearing down over his eyes, laughing as he straightens it and sticks out his tongue.  
  
Maddie and Chimney are in their own little world at the edge of the room, dancing to music Bobby’s surprised they can hear over the sounds of the party. They’re both beaming, and Chim is twirling Maddie in slow circles, punctuating each with a kiss that she pretends to find embarrassing.  
  
Hen and Karen are curled together on the couch, heads bowed together as they talk. Both have one eye on Denny, who’s been gradually crossing the room to join Harry and May. Harry calls him over, handing him a gaudy pair of bright yellow sunglasses. May wraps an arm around both of their shoulders and grins at the camera.  
  
Buck is hunched over by May’s message board, marker in hand as he finishes scrawling his message. He turns to Christopher, says something, beams, and turns back to the board again. From the drinks table, Eddie sips at a plastic cup of fruit punch and smiles across at them. Michael stops to talk to him, nodding towards the ruins of the fireplace. They both laugh.  
  
He has a family. A wife and step-children and the 118 and their families. He’s gone from nothing to so many people he would die for in a heartbeat, all of them here now, happy and smiling and safe. He loves them all, proudly, fiercely.  
  
And that terrifies him. Because he knows how easily that can slip away.  
  
_I am tired of being on the wrong side of those hospital doors._  
  
He’d rather be on the wrong side of those hospital doors than not be there at all. But just the thought of those plastic chairs and the too-bright fluorescent lighting of the hospital waiting room makes him feel sick.  
  
“You okay?” Athena wraps her good arm around his waist, reaching up to press a kiss to his cheek. Athena, who still has bruises from the attack the week before. Athena who still has an arm in a sling, who still isn’t cleared to go back to work.  
  
“Just thinking,” Bobby says quietly.  
  
“Sounds dangerous,” Athena warns. She scans the room, trying to work out what he might be thinking about. “Is it Buck?”  
  
Bobby breathes a laugh. “No. Not this time.”  
  
Except it could be, couldn’t it? Bobby’s been in a hospital waiting room more times than he can remember for Buck. A first date that had turned into a tracheotomy. The ladder truck incident. The pulmonary embolism right here in their back yard. The tsunami. Bobby would start keeping score of every time Buck almost dies, but just the fact that he’s already lost count scares him enough.  
  
“Needed a break from the party?” She guesses again.  
  
Bobby doesn’t answer.  
  
“Because if you don’t step in and stop him, Chimney’ll start angling for karaoke.” She takes his hand in hers, twining her fingers with his. “And we know once he gets started there’s no stopping him.”  
  
Bobby’s eyes drift to Chimney. It’s been a couple years, but there’s still a pink mark in the middle of his forehead from the rebar. Bobby’s sure that one took five years off his own life. And then the stabbing, Maddie’s ex-husband leaving him for dead and abducting her-  
  
“Bobby.” Athena squeezes his hand. “What’s going on?”  
  
Hen trapped inside a bank vault, collapsing as he watches on the security camera, unable to get to her. Eddie cutting the line, the lightning strike caving in the well, sealing him below ground. Michael’s brain tumour - shrinking, they’d said, but you can never tell for certain-  
  
“ _Bobby_.”  
  
He forces himself to look at Athena, and all he can focus on is the bruising on her face. He remembers hearing her over the radio, remembers how helpless he was, how _terrified_ he was.  
  
“Bobby, talk to me.” She looks around the room for any sign that they’re attracting attention, but that’s the wonder of parties: nobody’s so much as giving them a second glance. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“I love you.” It’s not what she asked, but he needs to say it. He needs her to know.  
  
“I love you too,” she replies carefully. “Bobby, is this about…” Her eyes drift down to her arm in the sling.  
  
Bobby presses his lips together.  
  
“Bobby, I’m okay.” She pauses. “Well, I’m on the mend, anyway. I’ll be fine. You know that, right?”  
  
He meets her eyes. _This time_ , he thinks, but he can’t bring himself to say it aloud. He doesn’t need to: she can read him better than anyone.  
  
“I’m safe,” she says. She untangles her fingers from Bobby’s and brings her hand up to rest on his cheek. “Everyone’s safe.”  
  
“I know,” he manages. “But every time they’re not, I… seeing everyone together, it reminds me how…”  
  
“How much you have to lose,” she finishes for him gently. “But that’s the risk that comes with family. We open ourselves up to the hurt and the pain so that we can have this. The little moments of peace, and happiness, and _love_ that come with it.”  
  
“I want to be able to keep everyone safe.” Bobby takes a breath. “But-”  
  
“You can’t keep everyone safe all the time,” Athena says firmly. “You do everything you can, when you can. You are a good captain, a good friend, a good step-father, a good husband. A good _man_. And there are so many people in this room who love you.”  
  
Bobby looks around the room again, and remembers.  
  
Teaching Buck to cook in the firehouse kitchen, assuring him every time he asked that yes, he was doing it right, and _yes_ , he was sure.  
  
Game after game of pool with Eddie, who refused to stop playing him even though he’d yet to win.  
  
Chim showing up at his apartment door to ask how the hell he was supposed to be Bobby’s interim replacement and when they could expect him back from suspension, because it’d better be _soon_.  
  
Hen agreeing barely a month into knowing him to have a key to his apartment in case the worst happened, then using that key to check up on him after the plane crash, Buck in tow. Bobby, sat on his couch sandwiched between the two of them, both with a hand on his shoulder, holding him together as he broke.  
  
Destroying that damn fireplace with Michael.  
  
Helping the kids with homework.  
  
He’d even relented one evening and agreed to play Nintendo with Harry, although he’d known before he’d so much as been handed the controller that he wasn’t going to win. It didn’t matter, though. Harry had grinned non-stop, laughed as he’d beaten Bobby on a game he didn’t really understand aside from the fact that there were somehow Pokemon _and_ Mario characters in it? And Harry had been gracious in defeat. In a way.  
  
“You were pretty good,” Harry commended. “For an old guy.”  
  
Bobby laughed. “Old?”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry nodded. “I mean, you are going a little grey. Just in places.”  
  
“Ah.” Bobby ran a hand thoughtfully over the top of his hair. “That’s not old age. That’s the 118.”  
  
Athena’s hand stroking his cheek pulls him back to the present.  
  
“You see?” She murmurs. “This is your family. I don’t know what’ll happen in the future any better than you do, but whatever comes our way, we’ll get through it together.”  
  
Bobby smiles. “What did I ever do to deserve someone as smart as you?”  
  
“You’re a lucky man,” she replies. “Now come on, that’s enough standing on the sidelines. This is a party, and we should be enjoying it.”  
  
Bobby takes her hand again, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Lead the way.”  
  
Athena leads him into the middle of the room and makes him dance to music he can barely hear. Hen cheers him on from the couch, and Chim catches his eye and grins, and Buck weaves his way through the crowd to turn the music up.  
  
Athena is right. She so often is, but this might be the most right she’s ever been.  
  
They don’t know what’s to come. They can’t know where any of them will be in a year, in five years, ten, twenty. But that’s okay.  
  
They’re a family. They’ll have each other.  
  
He’s sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed it, kudos and comments are super appreciated! 
> 
> I'm over on Tumblr [here](http://lionheartedghost.tumblr.com/) if you want to leave a prompt or just say hi!
> 
> Stay safe and well, everyone!


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